Facebook launches Trending World Cup hub for soccer fans to keep in touch with the action in Brazil

Facebook has launched a hub for football fans to keep in touch with all the news and updates coming out of the World Cup in Brazil.

Announced today, the hub shows the latest scores and highlights from matches, as well as an interactive feed showing posts from friends, players and teams. There’s also an interactive map showing which players have the most fans and where they’re located around the world.

From Thursday, Facebook users will also be able to easily share which matches they are watching during any game, simply by tapping the smiley icon when composing an update. Rounding off the announcement, the company has also set up a page for Facebook Ref – its own official ‘official’ for the tournament.

Naturally, as one of the biggest sporting events in the calendar, the world’s largest social networking site was always going to want to maximize the time people spend talking about matches and sharing results on its platform, rather than rival networks.

Ben is European Editor of The Next Web with a focus on startups, gadgets and lifestyle tech. Now a technology journalist with a specialism in mobile devices and a geeky love of mobile spectrum issues. Ben used to be a professional online poker player.
You can contact him on ben@thenextweb.com , via Twitter or on Google+.